Find out what other moms-to-be are asking. Join in the discussion with Henci Goer, whose expertise is determining what the research tells us best promotes safe, healthy birth. If you would like to contact Henci outside of the Ask Henci forum, send an email to Goersitemail@aol.com.

I am reading this with great interest and I am wondering what your
thoughts about it are. You write somewhere that the US perinatal
mortality rate is rather high for a developped country. This report
shows otherwise. Would you explain what you meant?

Are you sure I wrote that? Mostly, I haven't been able to find a
good source of international comparative perinatal or neonatal
mortality rates, and I don't usually make statements that I cannot
source. I agree that perusing these tables, U.S. rates in the
year 2000 were in the ballpark with other developed countries.

This is what you said
http://www.lamaze.org/NormalBirthForum/tabid/363/forumid/11/postid/1545/view/topic/Default.aspx

I'm not sure of the context here, but if Amy Tuteur is saying that
our perinatal mortality rate is low, that is just not true. They
are, in fact, shamefully high for a developed country. They fall
woefully short of Healthy People 2010 goals, have been stagnant for
years, and are on the rise. In some areas, notably Washington, DC,
where there are large populations of low-income black women, our
rates rival those of developing countries. Nothing that Tuteur says
can be trusted to be sound information. She is well known for
selective reporting, taking things out of context, and, um, to put
it politely, mistating the facts.

-- Henci

I would love to have more info about this and how it relates to the
safety of hospital birth or lack thereof.

Thanks. I don't know as it has any relationship to hospital
birth. But, in my search to see what I could come up with, I found
the CDC report on perinatal mortality in 2003 that Tuteur alluded
to. I'll repeat this on the other thread, but there is nothing
about care providers.

I have come lately to this discussion, and only
just found it as I browsed about, but I'm reminded of an
article in the Boston Globe, published November 17 of 2008, by Judy
Norsigian and Eugene Declercq, entitled "Troubling Data in Infant
Deaths". I quote at length because it is so cogent: "A
report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
documents a slight decline in the national infant mortality
rate...in 2006, but the rate has essentially remained flat since
2000, leaving the US 29th among industrialized
countries." It goes on to reduce the parameters
of comparison in five separate categories, shrinking the
standards of reporting statistics in the interest of
"fairness" each time, and winds
up exposing our glaring deficiencies more clearly.
For example, the authors compare the US only with
other wealthy countries that have at least 100,000 births, or
look only at white non-hispanic mothers born in the US who began
prenatal care in the first trimester. The authors
proceed: "There are 16 such countries. Among them, the
United States ranks last in infant mortality, third to last in
perinatal mortality (deaths in the first seven days and fetal
deaths), and last in maternal mortality. Digging
further into the data reveals two more troubling findings.
While the US infant mortality improved marginally --3 per cent
since 2000, the 15 comparison countries, which already
had much better rates, improved by 21 percent in the same
period. Put in concrete terms- if the US mortality
rate merely equaled the current average rate of the other 15
industrialized countries, there would be more than 11,000 fewer
infant deaths every year in the United States."
The article concludes that the dismal ranking
of our country is "testimony to the US belief that more
medical intervention regardless of cost, is better - even when the
evidence doesn't support such a claim...This is not just
about who gets care, but about how they are cared for." The
article is illuminating and current in its response to
President Obama's proposed health-care reforms, and really
resonates with those of us who support best-evidence maternity
care. It's been said that maternal and infant mortality rates
are the best indicators of sound health care
policy. I hope President Obama reads the
Boston Globe.